Friday, August 12, 2016

PL2016 - Week 22

We're officially 6 weeks through summer. Kids are off for another 3 weeks. So many of the blogs and people I follow on IG are heading or have headed back to school. That seems so sad...

In June, when all those same bloggers and IG-ers are sharing teacher appreciation gifts, and showing themselves with last day of school photos, at the beach, enjoying their summer holidays, I feel envious. But at exactly this time of year, I feel glad. I am thankful we don't go back to school until September. September 6th to be exact. Whaaaa? How awesome is that?

Now having said that, this is also the time of year that I begin to bleve a lot quicker. [FYI - the definition of bleve is this: boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion] By now, my kids have had about enough time together. All one needs to do is look at the other one, the 'wrong way', and a battle ensues. Or, they get silly together, and it's always fun, ALWAYS, until someone gets hurt. And in my experience, someone ALWAYS gets hurt...This summer has been kind of different from summers past. First of all, I'm working... That's right, not a lot, but some. And kids are left home by themselves more. The person who it seems to be affecting the most, is Madelyn. I thought she'd be delighted to have a few hours to herself, that she can watch 'her' shows, play 'her' video games, since her big brother sleeps until noon when allowed to. But it turns out, she's having a harder time with it than I thought. I guess she doesn't like to be alone. We have gone on a few camping trips, and still have another one in the works. But we didn't do our annual vacation this year. I guess it just wasn't in the cards. Couldn't get dates that worked for us, and then there's that job again... [Note to self, don't start a new job in June. Wait until September.]And, the weather has been absolute crap. I kid you not. The rain... We're all so tired of the rain. It started to rain the day after the Calgary Stampede started, July 9th, and has rained ever since. We have had a handful of rain free days. I wish I were exaggerating. July was the wettest month on record in 90 years. We broke records. For rainfall... Not fun. The Calgary Stampede was the wettest on record. Events needed to be cancelled because of the dangerous conditions, water and electricity do not play nicely together. Many of us looked hopefully towards August... Having high hopes for a month of awesome weather. Sadly, that too has been thwarted. It has rained and rained and rained. One severe thunderstorm after another. For this girl, who is ridiculously scared of lightning, I'm more laid back about it than ever before, which is likely because we've had electrical storms almost daily. I'm getting numb to them. Last weekend we met friends at a nearby pub, and guess what popped up on nearly every TV in the place....

This did:

A tornado warning... For Airdrie, which is 10-15 minutes from our house. My kids were home alone, so I was feeling extremely vulnerable and uncomfortable. The only thing that scares me more than lightning, is a tornado. Hell yeah, I have a emergency kit in place in our basement...It was weird that night, outside... Weird colour. Weird stillness. Weird that someone even commented that it seemed like we could be in the 'eye of the storm', like the Day After Tomorrow. [Which is an epic movie, if you haven't watched it, you should] The clouds were so low, they seemed to hover just off the ground. We had a great view from the pub window. It was eerie. Super eerie... I have to say that I was grateful to get home that night, and when we did, we were of course treated with an epic light show in the sky.

A few days ago, I heard that we'd already surpassed the amount of rainfall we usually get for August in general. However, I can't find anything to back that up. But it certainly seems like it's true. Flooding of some sort, have been at the top of so many newscasts this summer, we're now numb to that too. Any way... Enough about that crummy weather, I guess we can't have it all. Winter and spring were awesome. We're obviously making up for that now. Onto week 22 of my project life book:

This week, scouts went to Bowness Park and did canoeing and kayaking. We made several trips to the creek near our house. Libby loves it, but always gets to a certain point and wants up. Madelyn finally fell into the creek, in her quest to find frogs. We were actually in search of goats, a Calgary pilot project, but never found them. Mad had a girl guide wrap up, the season if officially over. We went and watched our nephew perform as part of the Ashley Hundred at the Market Collective. Madelyn was in her first ever fun swim meet. The following Sahlin Studio product was used: